Computer systems are being used, increasingly, in order to provide communication among users. Often, communication systems provide group meetings or other computing environments in which business people can communicate with one another, through the communication system, in order to conduct business. It is increasingly more common that these types of meetings involve transactions or other activity in which services may be needed.
However, current communication systems do not provide the ability to quickly and easily incorporate service providers into a communication session, or meeting (hereafter, the terms “communication session” and “meeting” will both mean a session in which two or more participants are communicating with one another, in real time, using a communication system). Instead, the services that may be desired for a given meeting are normally set up using a separate type of system. This can be quite cumbersome and time consuming, and is often unreliable.
By way of example, in an increasingly interconnected world, people often use communication systems to conduct communication sessions, in which the participants speak different languages. While there are many different types of people and translation services that provide translators for such meetings, it can be difficult and cumbersome to engage them to provide services for a communication session. Normally, one or more of the meeting participants, or other support personnel, must independently contact a translation service provider and arrange the details for the translation service provider to become a participant in the meeting and to provide the translation services.
More generally stated, it is currently difficult to match up service providers with people who desire immediate, real-time, services when conducting a communication session or a meeting, using current communication systems. It will be noted that many such meetings are multi-party meetings in which three or more participants, all at different locations, participate in the meeting. This exacerbates the problem of providing a given service for the communication session, or meeting.
The discussion above is merely provided for general background information and is not intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.